St Stephen’s Hospital General Manager and Director of Nursing Amanda Cruwys is proud to announce Dr John Yaxley, a leading Brisbane urologist, has started practicing on the Fraser Coast.
“We warmly welcome Dr Yaxley to our dedicated team of medical specialists,” Ms Cruwys said.
“His services will go a long way to improving the lives of men and women diagnosed with urinary tract disease and for men who may have medical issues affecting their reproductive organs.”
Based at The Wesley Hospital in Brisbane, Dr Yaxley is among the growing number of metropolitan specialists who are using St Stephen’s high-tech systems to practice on the Fraser Coast and continue their care of patients remotely while accessing their information from the patients’ Electronic Medical Records.
St Stephen’s was Australia’s first fully integrated digital hospital and is home to some of the Fraser Coast’s leading specialists in areas such as gynaecology, urology, orthopaedics, ophthalmology and general surgery.
Dr Yaxley held his first consulting session at Stephen’s in late January.
“I love the Fraser Coast. I’ve been coming here off and on for 50 years—I first came here when I was two years old,” he said.
“We used to have holidays up here when I was younger and after my three kids were born we brought them up here for holidays as well, until they wanted to start surfing.
“My first day at St Stephen’s has been great. I’m going to enjoy visiting the Fraser Coast every month.”
Dr Yaxley has performed thousands of urological surgical procedures since achieving fellowship of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons in 1995.
He was one of the first surgeons in Queensland to use the robotic surgery techniques for prostate removal.
“In the area of prostate cancer I have performed over 2600 radical prostatectomy surgery procedures, including more than 700 operations with robotic surgery.”
Dr Yaxley is the lead author of the world’s first randomised trial comparing robotically-assisted laparoscopic radical prostatectomy to the traditional open surgical technique.
The result of this study, recently published in the prestigious Lancet Journal, shows that robotic surgery achieves the same oncological and functional outcomes as the traditional open approach but was associated with less bleeding, less early pain, earlier discharge from hospital and improved early physical quality of life.
The study also shows men who had robotic surgery were less emotionally distressed 12 weeks post-surgery than men who had an open procedure.
Dr Yaxley is also one of Australia’s most experienced urological surgeons performing brachytherapy procedures for prostate cancer, having performed over 1000 brachytherapy procedures.
The hospital is a not-for-profit organisation owned by the Uniting Church and is a member of UnitingCare Health, which includes The Wesley Hospital and St Andrew’s War Memorial Hospital in Brisbane and The Sunshine Coast Private Hospital in Buderim.